Michelle Aakerstroem
About me I am born in Sweden, Uppsala the 25th of February 1992. I have two siblings, 14 cousins, soon 15 (on my mom’s side) and have my roots in Germany, Italy and Belgium. Way back in my family we were circus-people who traveled around in Europa performing. So even if I, my parents and their parents were born and raised in Sweden the people before us were made and born on the roads of Europe. I am a student at The University of Stockholm in Stockholm, Sweden majoring in Rhetoric. At the moment I am an exchange student at the University of Oklahoma studying PR and advertising. This family-research wiki is for the course Race, gender, class and the media. My mothers big family Because my mother’s family is much bigger and I know very little about my father’s family I decided to only research in my mother’s family. My grandmother, Laila married my grandfather, Lennart when she was 19 years old. Soon thereafter they got my mother sister, Beatrice and shortly thereafter my mother, Madeleine (see pictures). Later on they got my mother’s other tree siblings, Robert, Andreas and Victoria. My grandmother was spending most of her adult life at home, taking care of my mother and her siblings and the household. But parts of her life she was working. Since my grandmother had such a big love for children – and still has – she worked as a kindergarten teacher when she was working. But also because of the fact that she had, for her whole teenage helped her mother at home with her siblings and the household is was quite a normal act to take a step in that direction. I have always admired my grandmother very much. Since she - pretty much on her own, raised five kids. But also because she helped her mother so much with her own siblings, which were 10 siblings. They lived in a small house on the countryside, without running, warm water or electricity. My grandmother and her siblings had to walk almost 6 miles one way to school every day, both during winter and summer. My grandmother’s mother had rheumatism and so has my grandmother now. With other words - the women of my family have always been very strong and independent women. For that I am very proud. Even my mother worked as a child minder for many years to be able to stay with me and my siblings and raise us. My grandfather on the other hand – as my great grandfather was a self-employed and worked with selling televisions. I have a very strong memory about when my mother and her siblings are sitting and talking around the dinner table when I was about 5-6 years. They talked about when my grandfather for the first time brought the color-TV home. They were one of the first families in the neighborhood that could watch color-TV. And that was probably the only thing that ever took my mother and her siblings close to luxury, because they were very poor. Also, to remember is that the TV he brought home with color was something they just kept for a while, until he installed it at some other peoples home who could afford it. So my mother grow up very poorly – but happy in a family filled with love and who always was positive. She started working at the age of 14 to help out home and moved out to her own place at the age of 17. And I guess I am just like them, in my heart and head – not really how I grew up because I grew up in a typical middle-class family and environment – since I myself started working at the age of 14. Eisfeldt and Hertzberg But earlier on, looking way back in my family tree, more exactly 6 generations and a man called Karl Freidrich Eisfeldt had a circus in Europe. He was born in 1809 and had 5 other siblings, some of them working together with him at his circus. The Eisfeldts were one of the two families my family today, originate d from. The other part of my heritage is the Hertzberg family. And as you can hear on the names, neither of them are Swedish. Eisfeldt was German and Hertzberg was Belgium. To other names that are seen a few times in my family tree is Kunst and Stampf, both German names. And thinking about it is really funny, because when I look at my grandmother she looks everything but 'Swedish'. She has dark brown eyes, black hair and is the year around always natural tanned. And it has always been clear to me we are not - if you look back - not all Swedish. But to really see how much different nationalities we have in our family is amazing. Also to know that it is probably because of the circus-times we do have that. I have some relatives in my family that have been doing a lot of family research the last years and it is always very funny to hear them tell stories about how a lot of babies were both made and born on the roads of Europe. The backside with this is of course that it has been hard to track both parents in some cases and ethnicity and race, since it very rarely was the classical married, kid and then happily ever after in a house. I guess I could call us free souls that really did celebrate people being diffrent and the world being diffrent from place to place. Beliefs, attitudes and behaviors My family is a very open-minded and open-hearted family. When I think of my mother’s siblings and their children, also at my grandparents they are all very social, happy and understanding. We have as I have been mentioning earlier very strong, independent women in our family but they also very few. Out of my 14 cousins, I have only one cousin that’s a girl. There is more men than women in my family for some reason, even way back. I'd also say we come from the poor. Just looking back at my grandmother who lived in a small, small house without electricity and running water, way out on the country. She and her 10 siblings slept on the floor on madrassas they pulled out from closets when the night came. Also looking back at my grandfather, who came from a big ranch - they weren't rich either. They have all been hard working people who really strived to put bread on the table. And way back to Eisenfeldt and Hertzberg who lived for a moving circus. But people were always very happy, they were doing what they loved and they always smiled. I would say my family is very creative rather than skilled in math and chemistry and similar. We have all been good at writing, drawing, performing and using our bodies in physical activities. And we have all been doing it back and forth. Out family-attitude have always been very positive and happy. We love life, to do things, be active and of course the social part of life – the bigger family, the better etc. We are all good at talking and listening and sometimes I do feel we have a bigger need than other to talk. The human contact is very important to us. None of us like to be alone. We have not had any racist believes or hard time accepting and respecting people from other cultures in our family, ever. Probably because we aren’t ourselves a pure race or know we have one, strong ethnicity. We are everything but stereotypical, which we have been aware of and therefore never had a problem with. And I guess that is why; we have been the people, which other people are racist about. So it isn't very strange that we all have been very understanding, respectful and celebrated the uniqueness in humans. So thanks to our very diverse background we aren’t very stereotypical when it comes to how we act and are together and I guess we have been influenced by many other traditions. Sometimes I do consider us to be more as an Italian family then the classical shy, calm Swedish one. Finally, even if we have a very mixes background and some of my relatives doesn’t seem Swedish – in many aspects, we still proudly call us swedes. But love to talk about out old, long gone relatives. Traditions, religious celebrations and rites of passage My grandmother used to tell me there was something more than just us. Maybe a God, maybe not a God. She was never religious and neither is any other in my family when I look back at the 3 generations I have around me today. Me, myself have been atheist, probably because I grew up in a family that didn’t believe. We never went church for praying on Sundays but we did actually during my early childhood go to church for other reasons. Me and my sister did sing in the church-choir until we were about 10 and my both siblings and I went to the children groups that the church offered were you did read the bible and played with other kids. All my graduations, from I was 6 till I was 15 in school, has been held in church as well. Thinking about it, is weird because that is in general the relationship families in Sweden have to the church and religion. We don’t call us religious, but we do go to church when we are celebrating big things in life or when we honour people that leave this world. My parents were never negative about church or religion. They really gave us a fair chance to discover it ourselves. They also married in church and we buried my grandfather when he died, 2007 after Christian traditions. So, I guess we have always had a relationship to religion and especially to the church in some way but we don’t call us religious. The latest years of my life I’ve been trown back and forth from believing to not believing. I feel and think it is a really complex and complicated subject and I can’t really get around it. I don’t know what I feel about it. That’s also the reason why so many swedes today doesn’t believe or is religious. Sweden is one of the countries in the world with most atheist, if you look at the percent. Looking back again, my grandmother always talked about angels. About something more. Something bigger. She loved angels. She had them all over her home and still have. Her mother was religious. Back then, during that time, everybody was. It was like an unwritten rule. But my grandmother, had doubts and I guess she was a part of the first generation to be able to actually choose themselves. Earlier it wasn’t an option to make your own choice. If you didn’t believe, people thought you were strange or had the devil in you. Because my family’s background I think we were very spiritual and more open to other powers around us. We were never really religious rather more just free souls, spiritual believing in the good of people and good in life. I guess you could say we were more like the hippies than the religious people who went to church on Sundays. And I guess we were very influenced by the people that became parts of or family on the roads of Europe and the places we saw. In opposite to many people my family saw the world in different aspects and views which changed theirs believes of religion and higher powers. Research I have been using Geni.com in my family scattered and my older relatives who contributed photos, stories and anecdotes. Since I am - and my whole family - from Europe I couldn't find anything or anybody attached to America. Also that I used mostly Swedish resources and websites on Swedish. I didn't either wanted to go in to much into detail about some parts of my family history because I find them private. Also because there was more information to be find about some people than others. Summary I am very sure that my family has had a big influence on how I am today. After completing the research, many revelations occurred. It also feels like a lot of my personality traits and behaviors have been explained. I know I have my social need from my mother’s side of my family, also my artistic, free soul. And to be an independent, strong women is something I've been thought from the string, independent women before me. Also my lack of patient and temper is something I have from my family. I am very grateful for growing up in a family that is so understanding and accepting. That are true travelers and have seen much if the world and therefore understood early in history; people and places are different. Also that my older relatives came from very poor circumstances and are hard workers. Category:Students